The reaction to the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action has been illuminating. The problem is apparently that Asians were out in front as plaintiffs. Leftist journalists see this as some kind of subversion, hiding the real plaintiff, which of course is white people; and behind them is this nefarious force called “whiteness.” Do Asians have their own interests to look out for, or are they just pawns in this battle?
A Mask for White Privilege
Jeff Chang, an Asian activist is quoted in NPR:
"In the case of university admissions over the past decade, Asians serve as this sort of mask for white privilege. A mask that white privilege can wear in order to hide itself."In this view, Asians are carrying out White supremacy unwittingly to the extent they collaborate with lawsuits against affirmative action. The enemy for NPR must always be some iteration of “whiteness,” so if Asians are a party to the affirmative action case, they have been somehow misled. The Asians themselves are not culpable of offending the sensibilities of NPR, certainly not.
In the view of NPR, Asians are being “pitted” against Blacks and Hispanics. The real goal then, one may infer, is to pit all these groups against “whiteness”? To accomplish this, they offer merely a lot of verbiage. The Supreme Court decision laid out the data, and it’s pretty clear that both Asians and Whites were negatively impacted by their racial identity when applying to UNC and Harvard. This is why NPR wants to bring the focus back to their preferred bogeyman, White privilege.
When we read further in the NPR article, we learn that Chang claims that Asians were discriminated against in the California university system in the 90s–in favor of admitting White students. He now resents that the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) have accurately described the state of affirmative action as discriminating against Asians and Whites in favor of Blacks and Latinos. That’s what the data shows based on students’ acceptance rates relative to their academic decile.
NPR prefers that Asians conceive of themselves as the victims of racism (from White people), rather than victims of affirmative action. The former makes them in the coalition against “whiteness” whereas the latter puts them in alliance with conservatives.
But why shouldn’t Asians be in an alliance with conservatives against affirmative action–and in other political matters too? We’ve already seen it to some extent at least in the fight against affirmative action, which had such an agreeable outcome in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC.
Rejected from Harvard
The article gives the example of Jon Wang. He was an Asian student with “stellar grades and test scores” in high school. He found that he was rejected from many of the top schools, despite his excellent record. Ultimately he got into Georgia Tech, but he took his case to SFFA.
Wang told his story to Fox News:
"And then Edward Blum told me my results, and so they said I had a 20% chance of getting admission to Harvard as an Asian American, and then a 95% chance as an African American" he told Fox.”According to NPR, this is an example of “anti-blackness.” Yet it is plausible and people intuitively understand that if you take the high test scores of an Asian kid and put them on the resume of a student from a race that qualifies as “diversity,” the sky is the limit. That is the fundamental unfairness we’re fighting against. And if you argue against it, guess what you’ll be called?
By the way, Wang got a 1590 on his SATs, with a perfect score in math.
Jemele Hill
Likewise, The Atlantic columnist Jemele Hill stated:
Can’t wait until she reads that you gladly carried the water for white supremacy and stabbed the folks in the back whose people fought diligently for Asian American rights in America.
Wow, she sounds angry! This again repeats the trope that Asians are unwittingly advancing “white supremacy” in their fight against affirmative action, despite the fact that affirmative action is obviously contrary to their own interests.
…But they’re not Really Conservative
There is a sense in which conservatives do like to put Asians out front in the affirmative action battle because it’s not politically correct to be perceived as advocating for white students. On the other hand, it’s not like they’re making this up–Asians really are affected, and quite dramatically, by affirmative action. Furthermore, Asians tend to expose the “white privilege” theory simply by succeeding regardless of whether they just got to our country. In all these ways, one might say that Asians are an inconvenient minority for the left.
From an NBC News Exit Poll:
"Asian Americans have been distinct from the general U.S. public when it comes to progressive views on health care, the environment, gun control and a social safety net provided by the government," Wong said. "These issue positions have propelled Asian Americans toward the Democratic presidential candidate for the past seven election cycles."The reality, however, is that Asians are not conservative as a group. They voted 63 percent to 31 percent in favor of Biden. When it comes to referendums on affirmative action, though, they will vote with the conservatives, such as in California.
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